


how to save a life

by thedevilchicken



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Blow Jobs, Drunk Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, False assumption of non-con, First Time, Lack of Communication, M/M, MacGuffins, Rescue Missions, Soul Bond, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-08 16:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11085036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: It was months after the rescue when Scott finally realized what was going on.





	how to save a life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Babie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babie/gifts).



It was weeks after the rescue when Scott finally realized what was going on. 

Looking back, he guesses he should've known - it wasn't like he thought nothing had changed, after all, at least not after the first couple of days or so, because frankly Logan was acting like even more of a big hairy prick than he usually did and that was saying something. The signs were all there, buried not too deep under everyone's careful lack of engagement with the subject at hand and Logan's irritable, irritating exterior and then near-complete disappearance. But still, for the first few weeks, Scott just didn't put it together. Or maybe he did, but the way he did it meant 2+2 came out close to 8 instead of 4. He made assumptions. These days, he guesses he knows what assumptions make.

After the rescue, Scott knows he was unconscious for three days because Hank told him so. It was one of the first things he said when he woke up - _how long was I out?_ \- like time made a whole lot of difference somehow considering he really should've been dead, and probably lying under a touching memorial not too far away from Jean's. But Hank took his pulse with one furry hand and said _it was close to seventy-two hours_ and Scott nodded as he sat himself up in the infirmary bed with mysterious ease, all considered, like seventy-two hours was the answer to everything. He didn't ask what had happened. He didn't ask why he was sitting there in the mansion's infirmary instead of lying buried six feet underground. And he definitely didn't ask why Logan was skulking around the door looking kinda like one of the kids that'd misbehaved and gotten themselves sent to up Xavier's office instead of just coming inside like an adult. 

He closed his eyes as Hank checked all of the rest of his vitals and he told himself Logan had never needed a reason to skulk before. He told himself Logan had never exactly acted much like a real, honest-to-God adult. Hell, he was probably just waiting there for the exact right moment so his gloating would strike with maximum effect. 

Scott assumed gloating was the ultimate goal because sitting there in the weird glow of the medical machines, he thought back and figured Logan was the one who'd saved him - he was pretty sure the big surly jackass was the last thing he'd seen before he'd blacked out that last time, so it made sense. When he settled back down as best he could and went to sleep, Logan's persistent goddamn loitering be damned, he figured they must've had a telepath they'd been forcing to work for them or something like that, someone who could get inside his brain and tweak his memories just how they wanted to, or just plain make him think things that weren't real. Considering how _good_ he felt, and how he poked and prodded underneath the sheets and couldn't find a scratch on him, he figured his fuzzy memory of the things his captors had done to him were all just in his head. It wasn't a bad theory. Back then, he had no idea he was wrong.

He got out of the infirmary the next morning after a crappy night's sleep on a crappy pseudo-hospital bed where he'd stayed for 'observation', just in case; he went back up to his own room and he showered and he changed and then he went back down to breakfast, and when no one told him he was wrong about Logan being the one who'd saved him he guessed that spoke volumes in itself. In fact, when he thought about it after, no one had said a damn thing about what had happened at all - they all acted like nothing had happened, no mention of Scott's capture or his subsequent rescue. It was like nothing had happened and nothing had changed because sure, Logan glowered at him over his bacon and eggs a fraction more than was usual, but Scott figured he was just pissed he hadn't thanked him yet. He figured it wouldn't do Logan any harm if he made him wait a little longer, either, if he was going to play that game. 

Scott went back to work the day after that, after pretty much twelve straight hours vegetating on the couch in front of crappy daytime television, soap operas and cooking shows interspersed with the occasional fifteen minutes of news, then a night back in his own bed. He went back to work, took a class out for a jog and led them through the school's assault course despite all their grumbling teenage protests, then afterwards he went down to the Danger Room for a quick half hour's extra training with Bobby and Peter and Kitty and Rogue. He felt good doing it, running hard, working hard, calling the shots. He felt _really_ good, in fact - good in general, not even just good taking into account what had happened to him. 

When they were done with training, he went back outside and he ran five miles in the woods just outside the school grounds, sweated like a pig and ruined his expensive sneakers in the mud but once he'd showered and changed and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, he felt _great_. Maybe too great. He frowned to himself over dinner, missed chunks of conversation all around him and wondered why the hell Logan had chosen to go sit way down close to the other end of the teachers' table next to Hank instead of in his usual seat. The others politely pretended not to notice anything was different. At the time, he thinks maybe he didn't notice them pretending.

Looking back, he guesses he should've known what was happening because it wasn't like he couldn't tell something had changed, or at least that things had changed right back to how they'd been maybe a year before that. Maybe he should've known but he thinks he's going to go ahead and give himself a break because even if he didn't know it, it wasn't just _something_ that had changed. It was pretty much _everything_.

And he definitely didn't think to check if the soulstone was still where he'd left it. 

\---

The next morning, Scott made his way downstairs and he worked out in the gym. He felt stronger. He _was_ stronger, objectively stronger and not just in the way he felt. He felt like he could've kept on going just like that the whole day long, lifting heavier weights than he usually did, running flat-out on the treadmill in his mud-ruined sneakers - it made him suspicious, but right at that moment there was so little evidence available for him to work from that there was just no way he could've put it together even if he'd tried to. Besides, he figured maybe it was some kind of an adrenaline boost left over from his capture or some kind of a residual effect left over from whatever treatment it was that he'd been given afterwards. So, he went on just like normal; he tried to, at least.

The problem was, Logan was nowhere to be found and that wasn't totally normal. At least not normal the way it'd been over the past few months. 

Logan vanished after breakfast the next day, before Scott could stalk on over and ask him exactly what the fuck was going on. Logan didn't turn up to lunch and Scott only caught a glimpse of him at dinner, striding down the hall past the open dining room door with a six pack of beer in one hand and a plate of turkey sandwiches balanced waiter-like on the other, though the idea of Logan playing waiter was pretty far-fetched. The day after that, Scott didn't see him at all, not once. And maybe once upon a time that would've seemed right, and maybe once upon a time it would've even seemed good, like keeping the two of them as far apart as possible was for the best, but right then it really wasn't _normal_.

The thing was, they'd started spending time together, after. It'd started after Jean - after Jean's _death_ , Scott guessed, though that was still a term he found it hard to think inside his head, let alone say out loud. And it'd started small and it wasn't like it'd been any kind of a conscious decision on their part, for either of them, 'cause if they'd been asked about it Scott guesses they both would've said the idea of Wolverine and Cyclops hanging out was complete and utter bullshit, a fuck-up waiting to happen. But they'd started spending time together, mostly not even speaking but Scott guessed that was for the best because they neither of them really had all that much to say. Mostly, in the start, they really hadn't done much at all but sit together after dinner and drink beer from the bottle in half-grudging silence. 

It moved on over the next few months. They drank beer on the couch in the rec room watching hockey on the big screen TV, the two of them always taking opposite teams just so they had a semi-legitimate reason to argue. They supervised the kids playing basketball outside, sitting side by side on the wall next to the court with Logan puffing on a huge cigar like he was compensating for something and Scott bitching about the smoke though he really didn't give a damn about it. They drove out to the store to grab more beer together, Logan muttering not quite under his breath about Scott's old lady driving even when he put his foot down hard. And a couple of times in that first month they trained together, just the two of them, till they trained together twice a week, then three times a week, Monday-Wednesday-Friday down in the Danger Room, and everyone else knew to leave the room free. Logan was even mostly on time. 

They suited up every time before they went in, like they were actually taking it seriously because Scott guessed they really were - it was serious even if Logan always looked halfway irritated as he zipped his suit right up to his throat like the thing hadn't been fitted specifically to the size and general shape of him. Scott took off his glasses and he put on his visor and Logan popped out his claws preemptively and then in they went together, sometimes the same scenario over and over for the whole week or maybe two, sometimes new ones every time for a month till Hank was running out of new ways to try to knock them off guard with his simulations. But they took that time seriously. The only times they missed a session were when the X-Men had a job to do and so someplace else to be. 

Logan grumbled and they grated on each other, irritated each other, sometimes they fucked each other up in the name of training and then they didn't speak for days, except the next appointed time on the unwritten schedule there they were again, putting on their suits. And slowly, _really_ slowly, they figured out how to play to each other's strengths instead of just pissing each other off till they were both rendered completely ineffective. They compromised to get it right like it was all part of some kind of unspoken agreement they'd never actually made though it felt a lot like they had, an agreement that they'd get better at working together for everyone's sake. Even if they never said the words, they both knew they did what they did in there so there'd never be another loss like Jean. Not if they could help it.

They'd started spending time together and the weird thing was how it wasn't weird. Okay, sure, so they weren't exactly friends and Scott guessed then that they never would be, but they also weren't enemies and somehow after the first few months they weren't even rivals anymore, either. Scott guessed with Jean gone and teamwork the new name of the game in place of insubordination they'd just got no need for rivalry, even if Logan still pissed him off sometimes. Because Logan _did_ still piss him off sometimes, even if it was nothing like before. There were no fights, at least not outside of training. There were no threats, at least none they really meant. 

It was a kind of grudging truce they had that turned into grudging indifference and then grudging respect as time went by, until sitting next to Logan at breakfast felt normal, sitting next to Logan in the Blackbird was just how they did their job, sitting next to Logan on the couch at night, beer in hand, or in a bar sharing a plate of near-cremated chicken wings, or standing in the garden by Jean's memorial on a Sunday afternoon, all those things were just what life had become over the months since they'd lost Jean. Scott didn't resent it. It kinda helped to know there was someone around who really understood how he felt and didn't just kind of conceptualize it in the abstract. 

They spent time together and it might've been fine if it had stayed just like that, all teamwork and reluctant mutual understanding, but then it went further. Stupidly, it went further, before Scott really even realized it was happening. Six months and they'd gotten comfortable around each other, so much so that it didn't matter how close they sat or stood, if their knees touched on the couch in front of the TV, if their shoulders bumped as they supervised gym class. They showered under neighboring shower heads in the X-Men's communal locker room after training was over and they thought pretty little of being naked there around each other while they dried off after, or at least Scott did. At least Scott did until he was towelling off his hair one afternoon, just like normal, just like always, except then he caught Logan looking at him across the room. And that wouldn't've been so bad, either, except the expression on Logan's face was different, not teasing, not insulting, not any of the usual things it was when they were around each other; it was dark and hot and hungry, like he'd just missed out on a particularly excellent steak dinner and thought maybe Scott would do instead. And Jesus, Scott played it off like he hadn't seen and maybe Logan even believed it considering how his glasses got in the way of discerning line of sight, but the moment was electric, the moment was a fucking revelation. It was for Scott, at least. It made his skin stand out in goosebumps that he pretended were a chill. It made his cock give a traitorous interested twitch he hid behind his towel. In the end, Logan turned away, but he looked for long enough that there was no mistaking it: that look said Logan was attracted to him. More specifically, Logan was _sexually_ attracted to him. That look said Logan would've fucked him right then and there against the locker room wall. That look spoke whole new jarring volumes.

He really tried not to think about it after. He tried really hard to put it out of his head when they dressed and went upstairs just in time for dinner, and tried really hard when they took a walk after that to go grab a beer and they sat side by side on high stools there at the bar. Scott watched Logan's throat work as he swallowed, watching his fingers wrap around the bottle's neck, his thumb rubbing through the condensation on it, and he tried to forget as they walked home not quite drunkenly afterwards, the early summer air still warm though it was after dark by then, but it was all right there when he watched him move. When Scott went to bed, too hot, his skin sticky with sweat, he was thinking about the way Logan had looked at him in the locker room. And okay so the idea of it was new, that Logan had an interest in more than whatever the hell it was they officially had, camaraderie or whatever you'd call it, but it hit him in places he'd barely even thought about in months. It shot straight to his cock and made his breath catch as he stroked himself there in bed in the dark and really, fuck, of all the people it could've been, it was Logan in his head when he came. 

The whole sordid thing was in his head the next day, and the day after that, just as goddamn stifling to him as the summer heat was. And now he knew to look for it, it was there all the time - Logan _looked_ at him, and okay maybe so it wasn't _all_ the time, maybe not even once every hour, but it was there sometimes when Logan couldn't've known he was looking, Scott glanced at him sidelong from underneath his conveniently opaque red lenses. He wondered if Logan even knew he was doing it, looking at him like that, or if he thought it was all completely innocent. Either way, it made training strange the next time they went down to the Danger Room, made it kind of charged, sort of breathless, sweat sticking Scott's hair down against his scalp, trickling right down the line of his spine under his suit. And fuck, he was distracted, looking at Logan, watching the way he moved, confident, intuitive, and it was stupid because he _knew_ how Logan moved, it wasn't like it was coming to him as some kind of a shock. Except maybe it was. The way Logan's muscles shifted underneath his suit, it was like he'd never really looked at him before.

"Where the hell is your head today?" Logan asked, scowling at him, claws out, when they were caught out of step by the program again, and Scott knew the answer but it wasn't like he could explain. 

"How about you direct your concern to your own performance," he replied instead, tersely, testily, like that made any sense when it was obvious Scott was the reason they were getting their collective ass handed to them, but Logan didn't push. He just flipped him off and that was that except they showered together after that and Logan was looking. They ate dinner together after that, and Logan was looking. They drank beer on the patio outside the rec room after that, sitting too close on a too-small bench, and Logan was _still_ looking, like Scott's antagonism turned him on. When Scott went to bed after that, half drunk and frustrated and generally pissed at himself, when he stripped himself naked and stretched out in the insufficient draft from the desk fan and beat the crap out of his pillow under the pretext of just getting comfortable, when he groaned and wrapped one hand around his cock and thrust up into it with his heels braced hard against the bed, he wouldn't've been so damn surprised if Logan had been looking at him then, too. He hated how the idea of that just made it all ten times hotter.

Two days later, Sunday, they all wound up outside by the pool. The students who hadn't taken off back home for the summer were as rowdy as ever even with most of their teachers there too, tossing a ball around in the water and jumping in over and over with the same almighty splash each time. Scott kept as far away as possible when he wasn't playing lifeguard - they took it in turns, him and Hank and Storm, though he'd seen Hank soaked through after a thunderstorm once or twice and hoped pretty hard his furry colleague wouldn't have to dive in. 

Sitting there, he was still all riled up from the previous day. Still riled up from the previous few days, he guessed was more accurate, and he came off of lifeguard duty, sent Hank back out to manage batting the ball back into the pool every time it strayed in his direction and make sure Bobby didn't turn the pool to ice water just for shits and giggles, and he stretched himself out on a sunlounger far enough away from the water that pretty much only his feet were in the line of fire, if that. He caught a second's glimpse of Storm passing as he turned onto his stomach, face and glasses awkwardly to the cushion, and he held up his bottle of lotion. 

"Hey, could you get my back?" he asked, and the lotion vanished from his hand so he took that as a yes, but fuck, _fuck_ , the hands he felt on his almost too-hot skin a few seconds after that sure as hell weren't Storm's. Those hands were bigger and rougher and not just rubbing lotion _onto_ his back but _into_ his back, long firm strokes like some kind of weird poolside massage and not like general protection against sunburn, and he knew who it was though frankly, he hadn't even know that he was out there. It seemed like everything kind of ground to a halt around them, too, like everyone else went really quiet, like the general ruckus in the pool died away, like maybe they were all staring and Scott couldn't turn to check if that was true but he couldn't think why they wouldn't be, considering what was happening. Logan straddled the back of Scott's thighs and he gave him a damn tanning lotion massage right there in front of everyone, five whole minutes of it while Scott wondered what the fuck was going on but somehow didn't even think about stopping it. Then he stood, and Scott turned just far enough to look up at him. He didn't turn over all the way; there would've been zero ways in which he could've hidden how his body had reacted.

"I thought you were Storm," he said. 

Logan raised his brows as he stood there, barefoot and bare-chested, wiping his hands off on his shorts. Scott had seen him wearing less, sure, but the way the shorts were riding so perilously damn low on his hips, exposing his abdomen and the trail of coarse hair there over it, skin almost exposed so Scott's brain just filled in the rest the shorts hid all the way down to the base of his cock, Scott really wouldn't've minded looking for a while. It wasn't the first time he'd been glad his glasses hid precisely where he his gaze was pointed. Still, _I thought you were Storm_ sounded weak even to him.

"Sure you did," Logan replied, his hands on his hips, looking kind of amused. "Maybe for the first ten seconds." 

Then he turned and he walked away, just past Storm and Rogue and Bobby to another poolside sunlounger where the son of a bitch fell asleep in direct sunlight even with the din coming from the students in the pool. Scott guessed his healing factor took care of the sunburn as soon as it started, so he didn't need to think about strolling over there to return the favor with the lotion. Of course, he thought about it anyway. He thought about basically nothing else until Peter fired up the grill an hour later and he helped out with with dinner. He thought about basically nothing else but his own lotion-slicked hands on Logan's hot skin. 

After the kids' curfew was when things took a turn from dumb to dumber. They were still out by the pool after that, a few of the older students and faculty, most of them still in swimsuits since the night was so damn warm and there was enough light spilling out through the wide-open French doors and from the spots inside the pool itself for them to see by. Scott took one final dip, swam a couple of lengths, kept going a while while the others were all drinking and talking over a couple of bottles of wine and a few more bottles of beer. He floated, looking up into the night sky, until he heard the splash of someone else getting into the pool. He wouldn't've guessed it'd be Logan. For understandable reasons, he's never seemed too fond of water. 

Scott made his way to the side of the pool and turned his back to the wall, arms spread wide to hold himself in place and watch him. Logan really wasn't an elegant swimmer, not that he'd really expected him to be - after all, the guy had metal bonded onto all his bones so Scott figured it couldn't be easy for him. The amount of strength it took couldn't've been remotely small and Scott could see the effort in it the jerky, labored way he moved, but he did three, four, five full laps with Scott's eyes on how his muscles worked, then he made his way to the side, the other side, right opposite the pool from Scott. And jeez, the way that Logan looked at him, for a second Scott thought maybe he was going to come right over to him and do something they'd maybe both regret. But he hauled himself out of the water instead, walked away and stole Scott's towel to dry himself down. Scott pulled himself out, too, and managed to find enough dry parts of the towel left to dry himself off, too, once Logan had smirked and tossed it at him. 

They drank after that, sitting on towels so the cushions on the patio furniture wouldn't get too damp, chatting with the others, or at least Scott had the good grace to chat while Logan smoked. It got darker, got colder though it never really got _cold_ , and eventually Scott excused himself to go find a shirt and on his way back out, half-stumbling from all the wine he hadn't really meant to drink on top of the beer that he'd already had, he ran into Logan. 

Logan was still shirtless and barefoot and wearing shorts Scott hadn't had a clue he'd even owned, his hair still sort of damp and pushed back out of its usual slightly weird shape. He had a half-emptied beer bottle in one hand but he took just one more swig from it then put it down on a table there inside the doors and Scott wondered why, but only for a moment. Logan looked at him. Logan _looked_ at him, no way to pretend that look meant anything else but what it so very clearly meant, and maybe Scott could've acted like he was too drunk to notice, just blustered past or maybe picked up Logan's discarded beer and finished it off himself, and maybe Logan would've believed that, or at least let him pretend. He could've smiled a big, drunk smile and said _what, do I have something on my face?_ and maybe Logan would've let it go. But he draped the shirt he was still holding in his hands over the back of the nearest chair instead and he turned away, his dumb anxious insides performing goddamn Cirque du Soleil as he did so. He walked away, turned the handle on the _other_ door out of the room that led outside, that let out round the corner from the pool and not right onto it where the others were. He left it wide open behind him. He guessed that would work as an invitation if anything did. 

A minute, maybe ninety seconds later, Logan joined him. Scott had almost given up on the whole dumbass idea by then and maybe that would've been for the best, he thought, but then he heard footsteps on the hardwood floor inside, heard footsteps on the paving stones outside, and then Logan was there, looking at him in the dim half-light. Scott remembers the way Logan raised his brows like maybe a question or maybe a challenge or maybe it was parts of both and Scott knew even then it was the dumbest thing he'd done in years, but still he raised his hands to Logan's biceps and walked him back deliberately against the wall. He was nowhere near drunk enough to think it was a good idea, even at the time, but drunk enough that stopping seemed pretty close to ten times worse. 

He remembers kissing him. He remembers how the angles of his glasses got in the way like he should've known they would and Logan's stubble scraped at his skin and Logan just stood there like a goddamn statue, totally unmoving, so Scott started to pull back. He didn't get far. Suddenly Logan's hands were on him, one squeezing hard at the curve of his backside, the fingers of the other one tangling tight into his hair and Logan's mouth was on him, on his mouth, his jaw, teeth grazing the side of his neck, over his racing pulse. Scott pushed him back, not away, just back up against the wall - he figured it didn't matter if the brickwork caught Logan's bare skin because he'd heal back up from it in seconds and hell, Logan's hands on him were almost painful; the way Logan's fingers tightened in his hair said he'd done just that, but they didn't stop. Scott's right hand went down, followed Logan's side, fingers catching at the waistband of his shorts, and the next thing he knew was he was on his knees on the ground. The next thing he knew was he was pulling down Logan's shorts over his hips, over his thighs, till he was standing naked there in front of him. 

Scott licked him, just the tip of his tongue against the tip of Logan's cock; Logan grimaced like somehow that was how he showed pleasure, showing his teeth. He sucked him, just the tip of Logan's cock inside his mouth, his tongue swirling over it; Logan made a sound, low and tight, that he bit off quickly against the back of one hand before anyone else could hear at the tables back around the corner. Then Scott took him in his mouth, took more of him, wrapped one hand tight around the base of him, and Logan rested his head back heavily against the wall behind them. Logan's hips flexed so Scott pushed hard at one of them with his free hand to keep him still, at least as still as he could; he sucked him, he bobbed his head and traced the vein in Logan's cock with the tip of his tongue, he tasted him, felt the stone under his knees and the cooling air on his skin, heard the chatter still going on not twenty feet away from them and wondered what the fuck he was doing. But he didn't stop.

Anyone could've come around the corner. _Anyone_ could've seen them, and probably the security cameras really did. But jeez, he kept on going, faster, Logan's fingers sliding back into his hair, his own knees spread out wide against the stone beneath them. He paused, pulled back to shove his shorts down while Logan watched and God, when he looked up at him, wrapping his fingers around his own cock and squeezing, stroking, Logan was a fucking obscenity. His muscles stood out taut, his cock thick and hard and heavy, foreskin pulled back to expose the head that was still moist with Scott's saliva, and Scott just couldn't get a handle on what the fuck either of them thought they were doing. But he sucked him back into his mouth, Logan's hips shifting, Scott moving along in time till he wasn't totally sure if he was sucking him off more or less than Logan was fucking his mouth. He didn't care either way. Not even when Logan pressed one hand to his own mouth to keep from groaning as he came, not when his mouth was flooded with the sharp, bitter taste of Logan's come, not when he came himself, over his hand and all over the paving stones, Logan's cock still in his mouth. 

He pulled back. He sat back on his heels, turned to spit into the flowerbed, turned back as he wiped his mouth off on the back of his fingers. Logan was still half-hard but softening, all the muscles still taut all through his chest and his arms and his abdomen, so tense Scott could see the way the tips of his claws were pressed right up between his knuckles of his fists, not quite breaking the skin though it had to smart. He should've said something. He should've broken the damn tension between them, maybe joked, maybe cursed, maybe grinned up at him like he was drunker than he really was and said something dumb like _hey, we should do this again sometime_. Maybe he should've stood up and kissed him, his bare skin pressed to Logan's, both of them naked and exposed in the cooling night air, and damn the consequences. But what he did was take a breath and stand, pull up his shorts, rub his knees then walk away. He was too damn drunk to deal with it, and then again not nearly drunk enough. And in any case, Logan let him go. As he left, he figured that was for the best; it wasn't like he knew what he wanted from the big hairy idiot anyway, except the obvious ill-conceived blowjob behind the flowerbeds. 

In the morning, though, at breakfast, in the Danger Room, when everything had gone right back to normal like nothing had ever happened at all, he'd understood how badly he'd fucked up. 

By the next day, it had been too late; whatever he'd wanted, he'd missed his shot at it. And ten days later, still pissed at himself, frustrated and as fucking confused as he'd ever been in his life, he'd been captured and taken prisoner.

\---

Six days after he was captured, three days after he'd woken up, Scott couldn't find Logan anywhere. He looked. He searched the mansion top to bottom. He was there but he wasn't there, traces of him, burnt-down cigars and empty beer bottles, his jacket slung over a chair where it hadn't been an hour before, but Scott had classes to teach. He told himself the surly ass would come around, and maybe he even believed it.

Four days after he woke up, Scott was starting to get frustrated. However pissed at him Logan might have gotten in the past, for whatever reason, avoidance hadn't usually lasted more than a couple of days at most, so this was something new. But by then he was getting more suspicious by the hour about his new stronger, faster physical state, and maybe that almost took his mind off of Logan's mysterious absence. Almost. 

Five days after, he woke up in the morning half convinced he was hearing things that weren't actually there. He wasn't, as it turned out - it was a group of kids down the hall chatting over a clandestine game of poker, but even so he knew there was something wrong with his hearing because he shouldn't've been able to pick that up at all. He went down to breakfast and jeez, somehow the toast tasted great. The bacon was _fantastic_. Coffee was out of this goddamn world. And everyone was looking at him like he'd grown a second head except they kept talking like nothing was different, like they weren't staring at him goggle-eyed like he was about to tear off his clothes and sing _I Dreamed a Dream_ , or at least while they thought he wasn't watching. Behind his glasses, he was watching. He was putting the pieces together. He didn't realize he was coming up with 8, not 4.

Six days, he caught Storm in the hall by the gym after another workout he could've kept up all day long and he asked her what was going on; she said, "I don't know, you should ask someone who was there," then she excused herself politely and strode away to her classroom like she thought the kids might burn it down. Scott guessed that made sense and so despite her hasty retreat, he gave her the benefit of the doubt. 

Seven days, he caught Bobby in the kitchens, icing his glass of tea the easy way, or at least the easy way for him; he said, "Look, I'm not sure, I'm pretty sketchy on the details," and then he vanished before Scott could say another word. He left his tea right there on the counter. Scott wouldn't say he drank it in a kind of petty retaliation, but if asked he probably wouldn't deny it, either. 

Eight days, he found Hank in his lab, tinkering with who really knew what; he said, "I'm sorry, Scott, but it's really not my place to say," but when he escaped the room by the other door, he left his laptop logged in and wide open, what Scott likes to think was deliberately. Scott sat down at the desk. It didn't take long to hunt down his medical file in Beast's system, neat and orderly as it was. If nothing else, he thought maybe he could get a sense of what had happened after he'd blacked out, and what it was that no one would tell him. 

He read the notes but he guesses it was the photos that really told the story: what had happened to him after his capture that day was all right there on the screen in vivid color, images taken under the stark infirmary lights that hid absolutely nothing. He'd been beaten. He remembered part of that, of course, even if he'd assumed it'd been some kind of telepathy-induced fantasy of a beating that was all just in his head, but the photos showed what he couldn't remember, what he'd missed as he'd zoned in and out of consciousness. 

They'd broken his nose and they'd cracked a cheekbone, fractured his jaw; the written reports confirmed the assumptions he made based on what he saw on the screen. His legs looked like they'd both been smashed at repeatedly, with maybe a baseball bat or a tire iron, and there were deep black bruises right over both sides of his ribcage. Punctured lung, the files said. Lacerations. Internal bleeding, which explained how distended his abdomen looked. The cuffs they'd held him in had cut into his wrists so badly his hands were bloody and swollen and he was so bruised, _so_ bruised, his skin and his hair caked in so much of his own dried blood, that he really didn't understand. What he saw of himself on the screen was pretty close to unrecognisable. It should've taken him months to recover from it, not just the three days he'd been passed out, and that was assuming he'd've made it at all. And he had an idea, the beginning of an idea that scratched at the back of his mind, dug in and wouldn't let go, something he hadn't thought to consider before though maybe he should have. 

He should've died. There were unsurprisingly very few ways he knew of that he could've come back from that, but there was only one of them that made any kind of sense. So, we went to the professor and he asked him, point blank, leaning down hard against his office desk, "How long was I unconscious?"

Xavier slipped a pencil between the pages of his book to mark his place and he set it aside on the desktop. He looked at Scott over it, his fingers steepled together. 

"Three days," he replied, deliberately, carefully. "Just as Hank told you."

"I saw the photos, Professor. I read the report. I don't understand." 

"I know. And I'm very sorry for that." 

"I don't understand why you won't tell me what happened." 

"It's not my place to explain, Scott," Xavier said, and to his credit he did look like he regretted it. "If it were, I would have told you immediately." 

Scott frowned behind his glasses. He rubbed his face. He sighed. Everything he'd thought there in the back of his head, that nagging idea, he was pretty sure that confirmed it. Xavier hadn't helped him. He knew who had.

"Wolverine," he said. 

Xavier inclined his head just a fraction in agreement. "Wolverine," he replied. 

Scott nodded, like maybe something close to thank you. Then he turned and walked back out the way he'd come.

He should've gone to Logan then, he guesses, but at the time his stubbornness told him otherwise. He thought maybe he'd go for a drive in his car, but the interior had Logan's damn cigar smoke clinging to it and with the way his sense of smell had been so damn off the charts since his return, that struck him like a bad idea. He thought maybe he'd go grab a beer from the refrigerator in the kitchen, but they all had _Logan_ scrawled across the labels of them like he'd done it just to piss Scott off. So he went downstairs and checked the soulstone instead, and there it was, right where he'd left it, tucked away in its unassuming lockbox in the Blackbird, where they kept it just in case they needed it. 

Problem was, infuriating magical item that it was, there was no way to prove if it had been used or if it hadn't been; Strange had implied that when he'd spoken to Xavier about it a few months prior, amongst other things. Strange had offered to take it away and keep it safe, since they all knew magical items just tended to get people into trouble even if they knew what they were doing, but the idea had kind of stuck with Scott - okay, so it meant bonding, it meant _soul_ bonding, it was totally irreversible and absolutely not to be done lightly, but there was something about the idea of sharing powers the way Strange described that got to him. If regular humans could bond and share all of their capacities - their energy, their stamina, dexterity, intelligence, all of it - then it sounded to him like maybe, just _maybe_ , mutants could share their mutations. Maybe that sounded crazy, but he argued maybe one day they'd be desperate enough to test it. He guessed maybe they'd been desperate, and maybe they'd tested it. He guessed Logan had. He guessed it'd worked. 

So, his next port of call was the infirmary - more accurately, the infirmary's scanner. A quick fifteen minutes that didn't feel particularly quick at all and he was looking at his skeleton on the screen and that was it, the final confirmation; there were three new spurs of bone inside each of his forearms where they sure as hell hadn't been before. Logan had done it. He'd bonded with him. _That_ was how he'd saved his life. 

He spent the evening in his room, trying not to think about it, but he thought about it. The problem was, he knew what Logan must've done and he told himself it turned his stomach but when he went into the bathroom and he stripped and showered, when he went to bed that night, it was in his head and what he felt wasn't close to disgust. He'd been there when Xavier had met with Strange about the soulstone - he knew everything Xavier knew about it, how it was meant to work, what had to be done, though the sorcerer's advice all basically came down to _caveat emptor_. Using the stone successfully required sex. Logan would've had to've had sex with him to complete the bond and he must've done it - he must've done it or the one-sided link between them would've killed him, some kind of baked-in failsafe so the stone couldn't be abused. Logan would've had to've stripped him pretty close to naked, given the way their suits had been designed, and then fucked him right then and there in the room where he'd been held. But Scott couldn't remember it.

He tried really hard not to imagine it once realization dawned, he really did. He tried not to think about whether Logan had taken the time to undress him or if he'd just used his claws on his suit. He tried not to think about how Logan would've needed to strip off his own suit, too, or at least peel it down to his thighs. He tried not to think about Logan parting his thighs, about the blunt head of Logan's thick cock against his hole, whether there'd been time to find some kind of lubricant or if he'd been so close to gone that Logan had him just like that. He tried not to wonder if anyone else had seen it happen. He tried not to wonder if his body had reacted to it like it was reacting then. He tried, and he completely failed. 

As he laid there with the lights off, he figured maybe the expected reaction would've been shame - shame at what Logan had had to do to him, both the sex and the soulbond that the sex was used to seal, however fucked up shame might've been. But, really, screw it. He hadn't done anything wrong, he had nothing to be ashamed for - the guys who'd taken him had lured them all out and caught them all by surprise, not just him. He'd just been the one they'd taken, something about mutants being a threat to humanity, all of the usual bullshit except they'd absolutely meant business, and they'd really set out to cause someone harm. That someone had been him.

But it wasn't his fault - they'd made a grab for Storm and maybe she would've fought them off better than it turned out he did because hell, in a lot of ways she was a whole lot stronger than he was, but he'd been there instead pushing them away from her and it _wasn't his fault_. And okay, maybe it didn't need to be anyone's fault but there it was, Logan must've screwed him, Logan must've put the damn stone in his hand to start up the reaction and then screwed him after that to seal the deal. Logan had been inside him. Logan had probably come inside him because Scott was pretty sure they weren't carrying condoms on the Blackbird just in case someone felt the urge. No wonder Logan had been MIA pretty much since Scott had gotten back and woken up; the jackass barely knew how to strike up a normal conversation at the best of times, let alone _hey Scott, guess what we did?_

Maybe the reaction they all expected was shame, and maybe that was why they hadn't told him. But Scott wasn't ashamed. Scott was pissed off and turned on and when he came under the sheets in his too-hot room bedroom, he was ten times angrier than he was ashamed. Someone should've told him. _Logan_ should've told him. And whatever, what the fuck ever, if Logan wanted to play games then so could he. They could be as goddamn immature as each other.

The next time he saw Logan, he completely ignored him. The day after that, he ignored him, too, and then the day after that. Scott went on like normal, like normal had been over a year before except worse than that because even then he and Logan had been talking, or at least they'd been trading insults and not just blanking each other. But it looked like Logan got the message because then he was around more often, sitting in silence at the breakfast table, smoking by the basketball court, fixing a sandwich in the kitchen and considering how damned uncivilized Logan had been acting recently, Scott was almost surprised he didn't use his claws to spread the ketchup. Adamantium claws, not bone like Scott's were, and he sat in his room after dinner, rubbing his forearms, rubbing the backs of his hands, wondering how he was even meant to control them, wondering how it would feel if he could, if it would hurt. Of all the things he'd gotten from Logan, the claws were the most completely goddamn useless. Still, he guessed at least he hadn't gotten any hairier because of it or discovered a more than usual craving for red meat. 

The day after that, Logan was outside walking in the summer rain stoically lacking an umbrella while Scott was washing down the car in the garage with the door wide open and he watched him, and he thought: he'd gotten Logan's claws, and his hearing, his taste and his smell and his healing, all of it, but it looked like Logan had gotten nothing from him at all. He figured maybe Logan's healing factor had blocked it out, rejected the bond on his side or at least worked against it, but something about that idea just didn't sit right. He watched him at dinner while he had a distracted conversation with Bobby and Rogue, how deliberately he moved, how tired he looked, how fucking _gaunt_ , and figured maybe he was right - he figured that was Logan's healing factor working hard to shut down the optic blasts he'd gotten in the bond from Scott, just like it fought off practically everything else. But still, something didn't feel quite right. 

He watched him the next day while they were all cooped up inside out of the rain. He watched him the next night when Scott was through training with Storm and Kitty and Hank, drinking a beer in front of the sports news, barely lifting a finger except to lift the bottle, and Scott knew he hadn't seen him in the Danger Room since he'd gotten out of the infirmary. Logan hadn't trained with the rest of them in just over two weeks by then and Scott thought maybe the bond had gone wrong on Logan's side, maybe Logan's mutation was just incompatible with the soulstone's incomprehensible magic and this was just what had come from him saving Scott's life. But Jesus, he still officially didn't even know Logan had bonded with him. Logan still hadn't even said one goddamn word to him at all, let alone about this thing he'd done. And Scott, right then, didn't quite know he _still_ hadn't put it all together. 

Two days later, he thought maybe he'd go run a sim in the Danger Room alone for once, but there Logan was inside when he got there, claws out and slashing, in jeans and a crappy plaid shirt like the fact they all had uniforms meant nothing to him these days. And he was slow. Scott watched him move and he was _really_ slow, sluggish, grimacing, yelling out loud with frustration at the way he moved. And the longer Scott watched from the control room, the clearer it was that there was blood dripping down both of his arms, from the base of every one of his claws. The wounds where the metal protruded from beneath his skin hadn't healed at all. That was when he knew. That was when he knew just how wrong he'd been.

Logan's mutation wasn't fighting Scott's. Logan's mutation wasn't fighting the bond itself, either. Logan's mutation was the only thing keeping him alive as unfinished magic tried its best to snuff him out. Logan didn't have Scott's powers. Logan hadn't seen it through all the way, hadn't followed the instructions, hadn't fucked him to force the bond to complete. Right then, at that moment, Logan was still right in the middle of trying to sacrifice himself to save Scott's life.

"You didn't do it," Scott said, once he'd shut down the simulation and stalked straight into the room. "I can't believe you didn't do it." 

Logan slid in his claws as he turned to him, like he was trying to hide the problem at hand but he was way too bloody for that to work. It'd run all the way up to his elbows and smeared across his shirt, dripped down his fingers and smudged on the Danger Room floor. He reeked of it, the smell bright and hot and sharp with iron in Scott's stupid enhanced sense of smell. 

"Didn't do what?" Logan replied, and Scott couldn't tell if he was playing dumb or really didn't understand. 

"You think I don't know what you've done," Scott said, and he went closer. If he'd known how to control his damn claws he'd've popped them out then to demonstrate how much he knew, or at the very least to threaten him with. He figured he could've taken him, the state Logan was in, but there'd've been no point to that at all. "Turns out you're an even bigger idiot than I thought you were." 

"Are you pissed at me because you think I _did_ fuck you while you were unconscious or because you think I _didn't_?" Logan asked, and he scowled at him, still bleeding onto the floor from both his hands. 

"Because you didn't. And you knew what would happen and you did it anyway, you selfish son of a bitch." 

"Selfish?"

"You think I want this?" He grabbed Logan by one wrist, his fingers slipping in his blood as he held up Logan's bleeding hand. He dropped it again once he'd made his point, his palm slicked red. "You could have said something."

"Yeah, but I didn't." 

"Yeah, I noticed that." Scott huffed out a breath, his hands on his hips, getting Logan's blood on his jeans but he couldn't've cared less about that at all. "So what, you were scared I'd say I'd've rather died?"

Logan scowled harder, darker, at least ten percent angrier. "You weren't meant to find out," he said, like that didn't sound petulant at all. 

"You seriously thought I wouldn't?" Scott raised his brows. "It's been what, three weeks now? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the only reason it hasn't killed you yet is your mutation's fighting it. Do you actually feel like it's winning? I'll give you a hint: you don't look like it is." 

Logan grimaced. He bared his teeth just for a moment, frustrated, maybe just because he knew Scott was right and he'd never liked to admit when that was the case. The bond had to be reciprocated, needed to be consummated, or it would tear Logan apart in the end, maybe even literally if you believed the things Strange said; anyone else, Scott had no doubt it would've happened already. That was just the way it worked - whoever it was that'd made the damn soulstone had made it that way on purpose, a failsafe so there'd be no magical warlords sucking people dry to live forever or whatever it was that magical warlords liked to do. Logan should've been dead. From the look on Logan's face right then in that moment's hot, stony fucking silence, they both knew it. 

"Upstairs," Scott said, Scott practically snapped, and Logan frowned like he didn't understand the word, let alone the sentiment. "Now. I mean it. You're not saving my life and then dying for it. You're not leaving that bullshit on me." 

Scott turned and walked away, exasperated, half convinced Logan was just going to stand there like a prize fucking idiot and watch him leave but then he heard him follow him, falling into step behind him. He led him out of the Danger Room and into the elevator, Logan's blood still dripping on the floor as they went. He led him down the first floor hall to the stairs, then up them, along the wood-panelled corridor, straight to his room without a second's detour - they went to Scott's room, the one he'd shared with Jean what seemed like a lifetime ago. Scott held the door for him then closed it behind them, locked it, stood back against it to look at him. 

Logan was a mess, and it wasn't just the blood. He looked tired. He looked completely worn out and Scott knew it would only get worse if they didn't do something about it. So, Scott pulled his shirt off over his head and he tossed it onto the floor, leaving himself stripped to the waist. He gestured for Logan to do the same. 

"You don't have to do this," Logan said. 

"Bullshit," Scott replied. "Are you telling me you want to die?" He stepped forward and pushed him, right in the center of his stained, ugly shirt, and Logan didn't answer except to pull the thing off and toss it down by Scott's, then his undershirt followed soon after. Logan undressed himself and so did Scott till they were both standing there naked and pissed and God, even irritated and far from his best, the way Logan looked at him shivered right through him and went straight to Scott's cock. 

"This is turning you on," Logan said, like he was surprised by that, and he was right about it; Scott's cock was getting harder by the second as they stood there. 

"I thought that was pretty obvious," Scott replied, and he wrapped one hand around the base of his erection for good measure. 

"Yeah, but I can _feel_ it," Logan said, like that was any kind of explanation, and Scott guessed that made a weird kind of sense. "I feel every damn thing you feel. You sure you want to feel what _I_ feel?"

And maybe it was a valid question but Scott was pretty sure the answer was yes, and even if it hadn't been it wasn't like he had much choice. But the answer had been yes for months and it must've been written all over Scott's face right then because Logan actually looked surprised again, though Scott had been pretty sure he'd ceased to surprise him months ago. Then Scott stepped right up and kissed him. After that, _surprised_ was absolutely the least of it. 

When he pulled Logan down on the bed, on top of him, Logan went with him without a struggle. Logan settled over him, his frame heavy with the metal on his bones but Scott could take it; hell, he might even have kinda liked it. Logan looked down at him, propped up on his hands, _that_ look, the one that had been leading up to this for months by then, since that day in the locker room with Logan's eyes on him. He could feel Logan's stiff cock resting heavy against his abdomen and the feel of it made his stomach tighten. He remembered that night, outside after dark, Logan's cock in his mouth, how he'd wanted that so damn much he'd been willing to take the risk that they'd be caught. He remembered everything he'd wanted that night but had tried so hard not to let himself imagine, how he'd stroked himself again after and thought about Logan fucking him. If Logan had walked in right then, he knew he wouldn't've said no. If Logan had followed him that night and not just let him go, there wasn't a lot he wouldn't've let him do.

Logan tried a couple of drawers by the bed till he came back with lube and Scott spread his knees wider as Logan knelt there between them, slicking himself thickly with one hand. Scott was still faintly pissed but that didn't seem to matter all that much right then, and Logan shuffled in, nudged his cock down, rubbed the slick head of it against the tight rim of Scott's hole. It sure as hell looked like Logan could feel what he felt, his irritation, his frustration, like he could feel how much he wanted it though sure, maybe it wasn't the ideal circumstance, given they were both kind of covered in smears of Logan's blood. It looked like Logan could feel how much he wanted _him_ , dumb fucking antagonism and all.

Then he pushed in, hips stuttering, stop-start, and fuck, then Scott could feel it, too. Logan hadn't been kidding. He could feel what Logan felt. He figured that was what the bond had been meant to be like all along. He figured that was what it would be from then on.

Logan pushed into him all the way, till there was no way for him to be in him any deeper without some kind of assistance. Scott wrapped his legs around Logan's waist and caught the bars of the headboard with his hands and when he pulled at them, tilting up his hips, that assisted; Logan slid deeper into him with a groan so low and hoarse it was almost a growl. Scott could feel every last tiny twinge of pleasure Logan felt as he rocked against him just as vividly as he could feel what that did to him himself, how it made his cock twitch against his bare abdomen, how it made his breath come quicker and pulse kick up a beat. It was fucking overwhelming, the way his muscles went taut, the way he tightened around the length of Logan's cock even as it stretched him open, as it penetrated him, the way he'd imagined Logan had done before when he'd saved his life. He'd imagined him fucking him on the dusty, bloody warehouse floor, Scott's body close to broken, but all he'd done was press the soulstone into his hand and let his mutation do the rest. _Their_ mutation. Jesus, with the way that worked, they could've kept on going for hours. They both had the stamina. Maybe sometime they'd do just that.

They could've fucked for hours. And maybe they would've but somehow right then it was too much, it was way too much, the way Scott could feel how turned on Logan was, how his head was swimming full with sex, how near the edge of his control he was. Then it seemed to occur to him that he didn't need to be gentle because Scott wasn't the same as he'd been before, Scott was just the same as he was, so he did it harder, his strength flooding back into him, his hands healing right up, his hips flexing, Scott pushing down against him. Logan fucked him, almost bruisingly except he couldn't bruise and Scott's legs tightened around Logan's waist and oh God, the way it felt, Logan's cock in him, skin to skin, Logan's hot gaze right on him, the fucking intensity, he came just like that, over his own stomach, untouched. And maybe he would've been embarrassed but fuck that, Logan liked it, he could tell. His orgasm brought Logan off, too, and Scott could feel it, physically and in that other way, the new way he'd never even thought was possible. Jeez, every time he'd touched himself since he'd woken up almost three weeks ago, he guessed Logan must've felt it. Logan must've gotten hard and come and maybe he hadn't even needed to lay a finger on himself. Maybe sometime soon Scott would need to test that. Maybe he needed to watch.

They came, breathless except the breathlessness didn't last for long, but then the pleasure of the whole thing _did_ last, even after Logan pulled back out of him. It was like a weird kind of feedback loop that passed between the two of them till they were lying there tangled up together in the hot, sharp satisfaction of it, Logan still sprawled on top of him like heavy human blanket. Scott was pretty sure he wanted to feel that again as it started to subside, and probably soon, because it wasn't like he hadn't wanted it before. After all, it was pretty obvious Logan wanted it, too, and more than that, the way the bond worked, the way Strange had explained things, they'd actually _need_ it. But then Scott looked up at Logan's face, met his eyes, and there was something a whole lot more urgent there at hand than that particular thought. 

"Close your eyes," Scott said. Logan frowned down at him. Scott raised his brows. "Look, just trust me, okay?" 

So Logan closed his eyes. Scott grabbed the spare pair of glasses that he kept in a case in a drawer by the bed, and he slipped them onto Logan. They didn't particularly suit him, but that wasn't exactly the point.

"A couple more seconds and anything you looked at would've been toast," Scott explained. Logan just looked faintly irritated. Scott knew he didn't really feel that way at all. 

Scott knew exactly how Logan felt. Scott knew how he felt about _him_ , underneath, as dumb and unlikely as it all seemed to them both. It looked a whole lot like he hadn't lost his chance after all.

\---

Since then, everyone at the school's known what's between them. They figured it was better that way, once they knew it themselves - neither one of them's got any interest in keeping secrets, not since Scott figured out the stupid thing that Logan _hadn't_ done and hadn't told him. 

Since then, Logan's shared Scott's bed at night till Scott guesses it's more correctly _their_ bed, their room. And they fight and they fuck and they train day by day, and they argue because no magical stone's ever going to change _how_ they are even if it changes _what_ they are. But still, Scott guesses both of them are more now than they were before, even if Scott still can't figure out how he's meant to use his claws and Logan hates the visor so he wears a pair of ruby quartz glasses all the time, just the same as Scott's, instead of trying to control it. Everything's changed, but Scott figures it's changed at least halfway for the better.

It was weeks after the rescue when Scott finally realized what was going on and maybe he should've known then, but he sure as hell knows now. 

And maybe he's tied to Logan, and maybe it's forever, but it feels like a lifeline and not a leash.


End file.
